Ashness Bridge

Ashness Bridge 1999 mixed media installation to place a picture returned to its origin Artwork, image and photography copyright © Perdita Phillips multiples dimensions variable various digital prints available edition 7/7 $330.00 each Installation of Ashness objects, Ashness Bridge, jigsaws, souvenir pictures and chocolate boxes. Digitally scanned slides from ecolgue. Digital print on archival paper. Project: Ashness Bridge 1999 Ashness Bridge, Lake District Exhibition: Fieldwork 1999 Hydraulics Lab, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London Exhibition: Territory: A discussion of Art and Environments 2001 Mandurah Cultural Centre, Western Australia to collect, objet trouvé, folly, the lab, spatial projects, eclogues

Ashness Bridge, a Lake District tourist spot, became a fascinating laboratory for the tourist use of spaces. The beauty spot is a part of the popular imagination, and a focus of landscape and identity. The image is reproduced many times in tourist souvenirs. Here we have a found photograph returned to its origin and recaptured on film.

The interest started when the artist kept finding souvenirs and other imagery. Jigsaws were prominent amongst these. The location of Ashness Bridge had to be found (detail of installation in Territory: A discussion of Art and Environments)

A flurry of fragments launch themselves outwards from a jigsaw puzzle.  Ashness Bridge is the subject of this investigation, Sampling.  This beauty spot has been captured in the popular imagination a thousand times as a focus of landscape and identity.   Each of the objects attached are a slice of the experience of visiting and sampling this location.  Ashness Bridge is the pinpoint that is walked towards. The location was visited, sampled and re-fragmented, alluding to the slightly differing experiences of each one of the thousands of people who visit it.

Each jigsaw piece was attached to a sample and exploded in space (detail of installation in Territory: A discussion of Art and Environments)

Collage

Authentic water samples were taken and used in a laboratory-based exhibition (detail of installation in Territory: A discussion of Art and Environments, collection of the Geography Department, Royal Holloway)